I don't like jokes in speeches. I do like wit and humor. A joke is to humor what pornography is to erotic language in a good novel.
I think there's plenty of room, even in the most serious activist circles, for humor. Humor can be very effective both to inspire, and as a weapon. Just ask Frank Zappa and Charlie Chaplin.
Humor can be an incredible lacerating and effective weapon. And that is the way I use it.
Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.
Humor can be an incredible, lacerating and effective weapon.
I'd rather get a good clean laugh with good material, than an easy laugh by swearing or shocking. That's not clever or comedic, anybody can get a laugh that way, it's too easy.
I've learned to start from a really sound argument, boil down the essence of what you're trying to say, then build your humor around that, rather than starting with, 'This sounds funny,' and going from there.
He used humor more effectively than any president since Abraham Lincoln. Reagan was not an especially warm person, but he appeared to be. Many people disliked his policies, but almost no one disliked him.
A good painting is a lot like a good joke: you need to know when to stop, too many 'punchlines and you will have gone too far.
If a joke is too hard to visualize, I tell the young comics, then what the hell good is it?
Comedy doesn't have to be loud and obnoxious and beat you over the head. It can be this really small detail that, when it computes in your brain, you think, "That's great. That's masterful."
